Maid of Houxty makes her chase debut at Ayr, Monday

Owner-breeder Bill Aitchison's 7 year old mare Maid of Houxty makes her chasing debut at Ayr on Monday in the 2m 4f novices' handicap chase at 2.45pm. She's had 5 runs over hurdles including a couple of handicaps last season, with her better runs being on ground softer than the advance good-to-soft.
Still, this contest should provide a nice introduction, so we hope for an incident-free round.

Both Tfou and Thunder In Milan were highly thought of as youngsters while Fever Roque has the best hurdling form on view but may not quite have as much scope for chasing as some others in the field.

Best of luck to Craig Nichol in the saddle and to Bill and Carol in the grandstand.

Kelso Saturday review

Couple of runners at the well attended Kelso card on Saturday but it was a fairly low-key start to the NH Season from a Dodlands perspective.
In her second outing over hurdles Paper Tiger didn't show much in the 2 mile maiden hurdle with everything happening just a bit too fast for her. This put more pressure on her jumping and as a consequence turning down the back straight, our mare was struggling and Craig wisely pulled up.

All the same, it's still early days and it's looking like she will be suited by a lot further than the minimum trip.

The predicted rain - well, at least by our stable correspondent - never arrived and the going proved just a bit too fast for the soft-ground loving Shoeshine Boy. There was a slow-ish pace for this 3m 2f handicap hurdle and our gelding was caught out a wee bit when the pace eventually quickened going into the final circuit. Faced with a wall of horses, Shoeshine Boy just couldn't make sufficient headway to challenged the leading group and finished 10th but only beaten 12 lengths.
He will be better for the race and an outing over a similar trip will be on his agenda next - with soft ground a pre-requisite.